America’s political elites are not powerless to restrain the rogue Israeli regime: They are powerless to act against the grotesque lobby, led by but not limited to AIPAC, to which they have sold themselves.
No Pride in Genocide protest in Washington on Sept. 7. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
By Patrick Lawrence
ScheerPost
Let us begin with some facts of the cold, hard kind concerning conditions in Gaza and the West Bank after a year of terrorist Israel’s daily assaults on the Palestinian populations in both places. These statistics derive from a World Bank report issued this month, “Impacts of the Conflict in the Middle East on the Palestinian Economy.” They cover conditions through March; we can confidently conclude things have since worsened.
“Eleven months into the conflict in the Middle East, the Palestinian territories are nearing economic freefall, amidst a historic humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip,” the report begins. “Official data reveals a 35 percent decline in real GDP in the first quarter of 2024 for the Palestinian territories overall, marking its largest economic contraction on record. The conflict has brought Gaza’s economy to the brink of total collapse, with a staggering 86 percent contraction in Q1–2024.”
In Gaza, 1.9 million people have been displaced and more or less everyone now lives in poverty, the bank reports. We already know about the hospital bombings and the murders of administrators, doctors and nurses; now we learn that 80 percent of primary care centers no longer function.
Up to 70 percent of farmland has been damaged or destroyed, “pushing nearly 2 million people to the edge of widespread famine.” The education system has collapsed. “All 625,000 school-aged children of Gaza have been out of school since October 7, 2023,” the World Bank says.
As most Palestinians well and grimly understand, the Israelis intend to make the West Bank another Gaza and are simply attempting to attract less attention as they do so.
The West Bank economy contracted by only — “only” — 25 percent in this year’s first quarter. The bank puts unemployment at 35 percent, primarily because post–Oct. 7 checkpoints and roadblocks make getting to work difficult, if not impossible, and because Palestinians are now barred from commuting to jobs in Israel.
Bezalel Smotrich, the Netanyahu regime’s fanatical finance minister, has taken to withholding tax funds Israel collects on the Palestinian Authority’s behalf, sending the West Bank into a deficit the bank predicts will come to nearly $2 billion this year.
What has any one of us been able to do to stop the rampage that has produced these conditions? This is my question.
Gilles Paris, a longtime reporter and now columnist at Le Monde, considered the realities facing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in a commentary published this week under the headline, “The losers of the Gaza war are those whose powerlessness has become de facto acceptance.”
Apart from all the World Bank stats, he also notes a U.N. Environment Program study published in June that concludes the Palestinians of Gaza now live under or atop 39 million metric tons of rubble and will need at least a decade to dig out of it.
The Gilles Paris piece caught my eye because the state of powerlessness has been much on my mind since Israel began its genocide on Oct. 8, 2023.
There is no question Israel’s inhuman conduct toward the Palestinian people has revealed, in rip-off-the-veil fashion, the impotence of many people and constituencies. But which people, which constituencies? And what can be done about it? Let us take care to consider these questions scrupulously.
As Gilles Paris sees it, the powerless losers in the current West Asia crisis are the American leadership — he names President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and C.I.A. Director William Burns — along with the European powers and the Arab regimes that signed the Abraham Accords four years ago hoping to normalize with the Zionist state.
They have all suffered damaged images and reputations. None succeeded in stopping the Israelis’ atrocities. They have all suffered “humiliation upon humiliation,” as Paris puts it. But he takes too much at face value, it seems to me, and so makes a critical error of judgment.
It is true that Benjamin Netanyahu has emerged this past year as an out-of-control sociopath, and I am going by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the good old DSM. He is aggressive, given to violence, isolated, driven by irrational compulsions, indifferent to others, utterly lacking in empathy. If you study his face you detect the features of a crazed, maniacally possessed man. He has acted, since the events of Oct. 7, with near-total impunity.
The ‘Collective Biden’
Biden’s Cabinet meeting on Sept. 20. (White House, Cameron Smith)
But the thought that Biden and his people “proved incapable of preventing the disaster,” as Gilles Paris puts it, is a preposterous fiction. I would have thought a journalist of his standing could see as such. “The collective Biden” — a wonderful term the Russians have used since the president’s mental infirmities make it impossible to tell who is running the show — never had any intention of stopping the Israelis. All paying-attention people know this.
As Brett Murphy at ProPublica reported this week, when two State Department reports concluded in the spring that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid from Gaza, Blinken went to Congress to testify,
“We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
The two official findings — from the Agency for International Development and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration — should have required the Biden regime to freeze nearly $830 million in weapons aid to Israel. Blinken dumped his own people out of the limo.
Is this a man or an administration trying and failing to prevent Israel’s campaign of terror?
It is true, as Gilles Paris asserts, that the collective Biden has proved powerless even to attenuate Netanyahu’s madness, just as the Biden White House, whoever is making its decisions, will not moderate it now as Israeli aggression accelerates in the West Bank and lately against Lebanon. But it is vitally important to get this question of powerlessness right if we are to understand our predicament.
Please Donate Today to CN’s Fall Fund Drive
America’s political elites are not powerless to restrain the rogue Israeli regime: They are powerless to act against the grotesque lobby, led by but not limited to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to which they have sold themselves.
In late September the Israelis opened in Lebanon another theater in what Netanyahu describes as “the seven-front war” he plans. As that was happening, Middle East Eye quoted Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs, calling for the occupation of southern Lebanon on the argument that Beirut has “failed to exercise its sovereignty.”
There is no sign the Biden regime will raise any objection as Israel aggresses in Lebanon, another of its wanton provocations. We must now consider whether “the Jewish state’s” near-total impunity, as it has appeared to date, is in fact limitless impunity — impunity without end.
The Truly Powerless
Demonstrators in London on Nov. 4. calling for an end to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. (Alisdare Hickson, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Once we grasp the extent to which the executive and legislative branches in Washington have sold U.S. policy to AIPAC and other influence-mongering groups serving in the Zionist state’s behalf, we are face-to-face with powerlessness as it is.
The true powerlessness is ours. This is what we have to think about.
From the comment thread appended to a randomly selected column, “The War Party Makes Its Plans,” published in this space and reproduced in Consortium News, I choose the remarks of a few readers representative of various shared views.
From Lois Gagnon, Sept. 20, 2024, at 17:15:
“At what point do the people of the U.S. and its colonies decide they’ve had enough of this insane brinkmanship and call for a national strike until these lunatics step back, concede defeat, call for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations? Nothing less is acceptable. They are terrorizing the whole of humanity to further their imperialist agenda that only benefits a tiny oligarchy.”
From “Steve,” Sept. 21, 2024, at 11:56, in response to Lois Gagnon:
“Never.
FOMO is real. Fear of Missing Out on that next promotion, or that next invite to a cool kids’ party, or of being ostracized by people you thought were your friends has paralyzed Western society. Just look at what has happened with families and friends freezing out members because of political beliefs since 2016, or because of unwillingness to take a vaccine in 2020, or because of lack of support for war in Ukraine, or lack of support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Social media has driven the world mad over the last decade. People once used to be able to put political or religious differences aside, but now everything has to become a Manichean decision. You are either with me or I will cut you out of my life.”
From Cypher Random, Sept. 21, 2024 at 17:53:
“I’d love to think it could happen, but we are about to have an election where, just like in the last election, well over 95% of Americans will vote for candidates that support war.
There’s not even a hint of a peace party in this country. The only thing that can be found is warmongers who tactically say that they are against a particular war. Or the Obama tactic of complaining that the war is being mismanaged and that they can do better. All such anti-war candidates would of course give even more money to the military. But, in America, a Partner for Peace is not anywhere in sight. When they tally the votes for this election, they will find War with about 98–99% and Peace with maybe 1%….
In an election with uncertainty about whether an even bigger war might erupt even before the computers announce the victor, that is how America is going to vote…. Nobody proposes big cuts to the military for prosperity at home. A candidate proposing Peace would get stoned by the mob….
President Kennedy once gave a Peace Speech. One can still find it on YouTube, or at least you could the last time I looked. The Dems might have classified it as Russian Propaganda by now. But he did make such a speech. JFK never got a chance to see if that might have been a popular way to run for re-election….”
This is what powerlessness sounds like in America in the early autumn of 2024, less than a month before those who vote will choose a new president. It is by turns principled, determined, bitter, cynical, at times confused in its thinking, nostalgic for what once was but no longer is.
These three, and I quote them because there are so many like them, look at the political landscape this autumn and see no one standing for election, other than honorable fringe candidates, who comes even close to representing their aspirations.
I am sure there are many different views of the Gaza crisis, Israel and the Palestinians abroad among Americans. I am not sure how many people who still vote would choose an antiwar, anti-genocide president were one on the ballot this Nov. 5.
I am absolutely sure that, setting aside the impossible prospect of a partner for peace, as Cypher Random would put it, whoever is elected in a few weeks’ time will take more or less no interest in the sentiments and aspirations of Americans as he or she proceeds with the business of making war.
This is one of the realities of powerlessness in America. The nation’s political institutions and its political process are no longer responsive to those they are supposed to serve — those who own them, indeed.
The elites purporting to lead the United States, and to speak and act in Americans’ name, have fully participated in Israel’s brutalities these past 11 months, and in so doing debase America’s morality and its very humanity — making Americans complicit, indeed, in war crimes.
We have watched for nearly a year as the violence, torture, suffering and death have proceeded. And now, as dismal reminders of our impotence, we read of the results, the faits accomplis, in World Bank and U.N. reports.
I have long thought, having lost faith in the political process many years ago, that ours is a time — and there have been many such times in America’s past — when people need to form genuine social and political movements well outside this process to find their ways forward.
“A ’60s on steroids,” as a late friend from the old antiwar days once put it. Some of those readers quoted above seem to tilt in this direction. But then comes the pessimism: No, that sort of scene is not possible any longer.
Dynamics of Dissidence
The New York Times ran a remarkable piece in this line in its Sept. 21 editions under the headline, “How the Powerful Outmaneuvered the American Protest Movement.” Zeynep Tufekci is a professor at Princeton, where she claims the study of social movements as her expertise. Reviewing the preparations universities now make to preclude protests and the ineffectual demonstrations at the Democratic convention in Chicago last month, she writes, “Protesting just doesn’t get results anymore. Not the way it used to. Not in that form. It can’t.”
And then:
“Those in power have figured out how to outmaneuver protesters: by keeping peaceful demonstrators far out of sight, organizing an overwhelming police response that brings the threat of long prison sentences, and circulating images of the most disruptive outliers that makes the whole movement look bad.
It works. And the organizers have failed to keep up.”
And a little further, Tufekci’s coup de grâce:
“Hell, no, we won’t go! The whole world is watching! No justice, no peace! R.I.P. the era when big protest marches, civil disobedience and campus encampments so often changed the course of history. It was a good run, wasn’t it?”
It is a good thing Professor Tufekci is not an organizer or a leader of anything of importance, so exuberantly does she celebrate what she takes to be the end-of-history triumph of power — power, the topic from which she flinches in the predictable way of most liberals, in this case power as repression.
Tufekci’s training is in computer programming. There is no evidence in this piece, none, that she has any understanding of the dynamics of dissidence, as I may as well call it. Where would we be, I have to wonder, if some new university rules and more rows of police barricades were sufficient, as Tufekci seems to think, to extinguish any idea of worth, any commitment to a cause that insists on itself because its time is imminent?
I credit Tufekci, though, for suggesting various social factors that make the impressive movements of the past seem so distant, impossible acts to follow.
Consumer capitalism is vastly more advanced than it was during the “Hell, no” days. Neoliberal orthodoxies are far more prevalent, economic insecurities much greater. The “me decade,” so brilliantly explicated in the late Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism (Norton, 1979), came but never went.
Ours, in short, is a different and diminished consciousness. Our dependence on technological devices has advanced a social atomization that was evident well before Apple put its first iPhone on the market. Somewhere along the post–1960s line, people took on the idea that right-thinking social movements are not to countenance either hierarchy or authority. It is childish. Nothing gets done without both.
These matters have a lot to do with what I take to be a sense of powerlessness prevalent among many of us as one violent crisis after another unfolds before our eyes, the worst of them threats to humanity itself, and no effective reply seems available.
The sensation of powerlessness, as I have argued previously, is a primary source of depression. But it is almost always an illusion. To escape it one need only take the next logical step after an honest appraisal of circumstances as they are. This may be an advance of a few inches or of many miles. But with it, one is in motion, one has begun to act. One is still alive.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.
TO MY READERS. Independent publications and those who write for them reach a moment that is difficult and full of promise all at once. On one hand, we assume ever greater responsibilities in the face of mainstream media’s mounting derelictions. On the other, we have found no sustaining revenue model and so must turn directly to our readers for support. I am committed to independent journalism for the duration: I see no other future for American media. But the path grows steeper, and as it does I need your help. This grows urgent now. In recognition of the commitment to independent journalism, please subscribe to The Floutist, or via my Patreon account.
This article is from ScheerPost.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Please Donate Today to CN’s Fall Fund Drive
This article brings to mind a question I asked my brother, Ray McGovern, some time ago: How do you handle the disappointments with our nations continuing wars, it’s inattention to problems at home, etc. His reply was something he learned from his friend, the great anti-war activist, Jesuit Priest Dan Berrigan, together with his own experience, namely, that success should not be the focus. Rather it is being FAITHFUL, faithfulness to the cause. Berrigan: “It isn’t about results, but about doing the right thing.” Putting “success” on the back burner and simply being faithful is very freeing.
More from Berrigan and the others of the Catonsville Nine (broke into Selective Service office in Catonsville, MD, and burned many draft cards as a protest against the Viet Nam War) in a statement explaining their actions: “Our apologies good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house…” Hmmmm, burning paper instead of children…….
“how many people who still vote would choose an antiwar, anti-genocide president were one on the ballot this Nov. 5.”
I do, and I did, and you know quite well that there is, and so we all could.
But I guess you’ve succumbed to the powerlessness in feeling petty to even mention committing such an act, destined (or rather, as you’ve decided to deny it exists, designed) to fail.
I, however, embrace that powerlessness. I don’t vote to win, or to feel vindication. I do understand “the dynamics of dissidence”.
I, also do, did and will. 75% of Democrats and 60% of independents are opposed to U.S. funding of genocide. If half of those would vote for the antiwar, anti-genocide candidate that Lawrence and other hand wringers won’t tell you about, we could forever change American politics.
I sent an email to my U. S. Senator, the ranking Senator from Illinois.
Here is that email:
Senator, The President inferred today Putin was evil.
I have an observation you might want to hear.
Any way I find this topic very interesting.
This tagging of Putin as being &^*^$#@ Evil (POTUS dropped an F-bomb)
I immediately sensed a dynamic conflict in the thoughts coming from the brain of President Biden. Senators, answering to the higher call of public service, the superior position of individuals in Congress, I feel might want to understand how someone such as I see recent events the U.S. has engaged in world wide.
How is this thought of evil held in the presidents brain relating to Putin but somehow does not apply to the PM of Israel Netanyahu?
I’m curious you know! END OF EMAIL TEXT
Judging from the ample evidence of just who did what it seems to me Biden’s logic is severely flawed
I was afraid of this. This virus the Great Orange Turd is carrying, that it would be contagious. Something seems to have stricken the POTUS. Could it possible be the conflict does really in reside his brain? Maybe, as an original Biden thought and he blurted a Freudian slip? Saying the quiet part out loud. Or more likely is he simply that far gone?
Curious people want to know, government boot licking pyscophants not so much!
As usual my Senator has not replied. I figured as much!
Thanks CN
Genocide Joy, when asked about the latest nonsense regarding Trump and Covid and Putin, immediately put on her scowl and pretended to get worked up about “the brutal dictator” Putin, a lie she easily got away with on ABC “news.” I only watch the news when I get my hair cut, because my friend who cuts it always has it on. The level of hysterical propaganda and outright lying is off the charts at this point, and I was by turns outraged and angry with what I saw.
A good write up, Patrick, but I disagree. The real thing that has happened is that the man has pushed the penalties so high that you really have to stop and think. Back in the day, the infamous nickle bag of pot was $5 for one ounce. As they moved the penalties up, so went the price of a bag of pot. Just look at the penalties they handed out for the Jan 6 riot.
Patrick gives us a worked over essay that first appeared in Sheerpost. In it he repeats the implication that there are no antiwar, anti-genocide candidates on the ballot, which he evidently knows to be untrue because he grudgingly adds that there are some “honorable fringe candidates” who are opposed to the carnage in Gaza.
“To escape it (our depression brought on by a state of powerlessness) one need only take the next logical step after an honest appraisal of circumstances as they are,” Lawrence adds, concluding that the honest appraisal will result in our moving, “a few inches or ….many miles.” But he is vague as to what that motion would encompass. The “sixties on steroids?”
He deliberately ignores the most obvious action one might take to ward off the feeling of powerlessness he describes. That would be to campaign, and vote, for the “fringe” candidate who is in constant motion, campaigning tirelessly against the carnage in Gaza. Patrick has an audience and could amplify the courageous efforts of that “fringe” candidate. (I am speaking of the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein,) But he chooses instead to leave us with no clear idea of how get beyond the muck of powerlessness.
I appreciate your take down of Tufekci, who clearly does not understand the broader consequences of protest movements. The 1968 protests were part of a world revolution which David Graeber describes as “broke out almost everywhere, seized power nowhere, but nonetheless changed everything.” The consequences of those protests are still with us, with the US reluctant to commit to any large scale ground conflict until 9/11 and even after that their fear of protests forced them to fight those conflicts in a way that would incur a lot of innocents killed (collateral damage), which would make achieving their military objectives all but impossible. And this further sours people on large overseas military adventures.
I’ve heard the phrase “Taught Helplessness” to explain what is drummed into us throughout our childhood and beyond: that we are powerless. The economic elites also keep people in so precarious a financial state in life that many dare not risk standing up and losing what little they have, but precariousness is not the best method of control, as the fear that it breeds can very easily flip to anger. I’m somewhat more hopeful than many, as unintended consequences rule the day and people will eventually lash out in anger or desperation. And then they will see how powerful they really are.
The problem the U.S. population seems powerless to correct, namely being colonized by a murderous tyranny, is deeper, older, and more fundamental than its political class being on the payroll of AIPAC.
Consider NSC-68, written by Paul Nitze in 1950, which from top to bottom is a textbook case of psychological projection. It accuses the USSR of an implacable lust to rule the world when Stalin had long since decided to pursue a policy of socialism in one country. The USSR did take the side of anticolonial national liberation movements throughout the Cold War, result being that Russia today has many friends across the global majority. Meanwhile, the U.S. religion of Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism has been baked into the American psyche from before its founding.
In manufacturing consent for interminable U.S. coups, wars, proxy wars, dirty wars, and economic war (illegal U.S. sanctions) since 1945, a totalitarian media apparatus has become so financially powerful and arrogated so much authority to itself that the U.S. public, pounded relentlessly with one or another contradictory variant of outrageously fantastic lies, is polarized in so many directions and radicalized to such an extreme that the U.S. body politic is virtually incapable of confronting the U.S. ruling class with one coherent voice grounded in verifiable facts.
Meanwhile, U.S. militarism has come home in the form of heavily armed police trained to perceive U.S. citizens exercising their First Amendment rights as insurgents and treat them accordingly. So the relatively small cross section of the U.S. population who understand the U.S. is waging a war of aggression on the rest of the world are faced with the task of organizing a disoriented, confused, and volatile public to confront the increasingly violent and repressive forces who are in control of the U.S. elected government and mass media.
Overseas, these forces have killed at least 20 million people and destroyed numerous countries since WWII. Assembly to petition government with grievances is seen by the forces controlling the U.S. as skirmishes in a war and are treated as such. This will continue to make organizing difficult until the information war, which depends almost entirely on access to increasingly repressive digital media, can be won.
Great article as usual by Patrick Lawrence, For another BLOCKBUSTER piece on Israel’s crimes against humanity, watch Max Blumenthal’s brilliant post yesterday — “Atrocity Inc: How Israel Sells Its Destruction Of Gaza” — available on YouTube.
Right now when it comes to the Middle East, the Zionist Power Configuration in Washington calls virtually 95% of the shots.
There is no benefit to Big Oil or Wall Street parasites for the psychopathological genocidals to pulverize Beirut, bomb Syria, or massacre close to 200,000 Palestinians over the past 12 mos. Our gentile elites reap no rewards when trade agreements and commercial relations with the lucrative West Asian markets are left tattered, torn up or destabilized.
We’re dealing with biblical messianic millenarians who must be ardently challenged. Unfortunately they have almost total control of the Western mass media which makes the task of calling them to account all the more difficult.
How beautifully Mr. Lawrence has expressed the stomach-churning, heart racing emotions I personally feel inside. It is a wonderful thing to read. Just one thing: they’re all sociopaths or psychopaths AND narcissists, or as my Bishop calls, “global luciferic united demons” and we are fighting for are existance.
Beautifully stated. Love your Bishop!
Buying into this or not, we are powerless either ways. Not just us, but the the rest of the world.
The castration of American idealism: the shining city on a hill to which Ronald Reagan once referred has always been a mirage, but never more so than today. Something for real progressives and liberals to consider this November when they vote, remembering that Trump and Harris are not the only candidates, Jill Stein and Cornell West are also options, even if, because of Democratic Party lawfare, you have to make the effort to write in their names.
Our society has been built on constant warfare since the earliest colonies. We can’t imagine living any other way. Exterminating Palestinians, exterminating Pequods, what’s the difference?
Regarding “the collective Biden,” if indeed policy is being made by some sort of committee, an important question is whether there is a strong leader of the group or not. If not, then “group think” is apt to prevail, with no one really wanting to suggest a change to the policy for fear of being singled out in a negative way. In other words, under certain circumstances if policy is being shaped by a group with no strong central power, that policy is more likely to continue regardless of many of the consequences.
I want to bring up what seems to be a contrary point of view. Gilbert Doctorow has been asserting that rather than the Israeli tail wagging the impotent American dog, something more akin to the U.S. involvement in Ukraine is happening. That is, according to Doctorow, through Israel’s actions policy objectives of the U.S. are to be realized. Hence, there is no real effort on the part of the U.S. Government to stop Israel from what it is doing. Israel is doing what the U.S. Government wants done.
Re: Our powerlessness: This is NOT a flippant suggestion:
How about all of us – a definite majority, who sense that the American system of governance is irreparably broken – corrupt and fraudulent, ergo decide en masse NOT to participate in the upcoming election.
The system, as it is, definitely cannot be repaired from within, therefore if the percentage of non participants exceeds 51% of eligible voters, this outcome must surely be officially recognized as the result, and any other result – Republican or Democrat, be nullified; ruled invalid.
Question: Would the 3rd Party candidate, receiving the most votes, then automatically become the president-elect.
This would be the real-change revolution all of us desire, without having to turn to a 2nd American civil war, or worse!
Vote for whomever your choice is, only not for the least worst of the two worst candidates on offer, as per usual.
May the non exclusive Monotheism’s of us all, globally, redress America’s and the World’s woes!!!
“The sensation of powerlessness, as I have argued previously, is a primary source of depression. But it is almost always an illusion.”
I agree very much. And one key toward stepping out of the illusion of powerlessness is to recognize how little power I have over anything. I have the power to choose the best food when I go to the supermarket, but I don’t have power over what choices are offered there. I have the power to vote for the best candidates in November but not much power, in our present system, over what choices are offered.
I can, however, become more active in the local chapter of my political party and that begins to magnify my power, at least locally. Or I can volunteer at the food bank.
As Mr. Lawrence writes, the best path is to build community, and that means working locally. American society is fragmented by the emphasis on individualism, and that fragmentation is favorable to the large corporate powers. Divided people are so much easier to dominate. The best community is built on mutual aid rather than aiming toward a project goal. A goal-oriented group, however well intented, becomes focused on ends and the means become secondary. But we make the path by walking it, so the way we proceed is primary.
We’re in a hard place right now, because as individuals we really don’t have much power. But by acknowledging that we can spare ourselves a lot of frustration and depression, and we can build forward.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that the MIC is so embedded within the american economy that to vote for peace is to vote for poverty. How many towns and cities in the USA are totally dependent on the big arms producers and their supply chains ? You want peace you’re going to lose your jobs. If the economy diversified away from death and destruction there might be options, but there isn’t, and all the non-MIC jobs have, to a large extent, been outsourced to the third world anyway.
As one who is quoted here, let me relate something a fellow boomer activist said to me yesterday while we were demonstrating outside a military base. We have been activists our whole lives thinking we would leave our children and grandchildren a better world than was left to us. Look where we are.
It’s a bitter pill, but I guess the lesson is, this is multigenerational work. It’s an ongoing struggle. What gives me hope is seeing these young people put everything on the line because they understand in their bones the cause is just and essential.
My final thought is; capitalism is the main driving force behind all the violence. It needs to be replaced with a more equitable system if humans and all life on earth are to survive.
They have used culture wars, gender ideology and what we used to call ecology to drive wedges between us, and at least partly because of these (lucrative, for a few) distractions there is little talk of class issues these days. With some awareness of capitalism on steroids perhaps some people will cease calling the Democrats “left-wing” (sigh). I suspect that those into those distractions are not suffering economic hardship.
I agree with you and with Lois Gagnon: capitalism is at the root of the problem and capitalism is a very hard problem to solve. We must be steady and patient, and keep a good sense of humor.
I don’t have a solution to offer but from where I stand it looks like capitalism will collapse under its own weight. How much of the world will be damaged or destroyed in that collapse, no one can predict. All empires fall, historically, and I see no reason that the US empire will be any exception. The US empire is already in crisis, but it may take a while to fall. The Roman empire took a few centuries to collapse. While the British empire collapsed over the course of 50 years. But then, those 50 years included two World Wars.
Very good! When I drive down High Street in Belfast, Maine, you see endless Harris signs. The houses where they are planted are very expensive houses, mostly filled with retirees. People who have no economic worries — YET — are quite content to continue on the same downward spiral. And, yes, it does not help one’s brain function to be calling Dems left-wing, socialist, Bolshevik, communist, etc; it just reveals how unthinking people are.
To Gordon H. Yet another misdiagnosis of what amounts to identity as THE cause of divisions and of diversions away from class.
Usually by armchair leftist theorist white men who’ve never had to struggle to be recognized. Nor for that matter, ever held a tool in their lives.
I was a blue collar rank and file union activist for close to 30 years. I also fit both sets of verboten letters: LGBTQ and BIPOC. People are no longer limited by the Aristotelian either/or. For a post-Einstein era it’s relativity and uncertainty, superposition, multiplicities. So then both/and. The letters of my identities do not cancel my membership in the working class. Like my grandfather the Wobbly (I.W.W.) and the old C.I.O. 1930’s labor organizers I was trained by, it’s about SOLIDARITY–not ignoring our obvious differences, but rather uniting across them in common cause.
It’s also a flag whenever pronouns are used without a clear referent. “They” have driven wedges… between “us” Reminds me of a joke from the ’60s. The Lone Ranger (’50s US TV) and Tonto (Native) are surrounded by what appear to be hostile Indians. The Lone Ranger says: “We have to fight them, Tonto!” To which Tonto replies: “What’s this ‘we,’ white man?!” Or they. Or us.
And no, not so “those into those distractions are not suffering economic hardship.” What may be a ‘distraction’ in your opinion is of vital importance for people in ghettos, barrios, and reservations. Hardly the upper income types. You seem to be conflating the Ivy D liberals with everyone else. The elite Ds don’t have a problem with gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation–as long as Ivy League or equivalent educational credentials are present.
As for liberals, well, I never forgot what those old line labor organizers told me in the early ’70s. “Liberals are the ones who leave the room when the fight starts.”
Hi Lois,
Actually, I’d go beyond multigenerational and say the work of holding back the powerful is endless.
But I don’t think capitalism is the main culprit, thought US style anything-goes-capitalism is hugely detrimental. Tension and violence between rulers and lower classes began at the dawn of civilization, well before capitalism, manifesting endlessly through history with repressions and revolts, some successful, most not.
It takes a great upheaval to upset the status quo; the Black Death gave surviving serfs some measure of relief, abject poverty sparked the French Revolution, the Great Depression brought FDR and the New Deal.
But, as soon as people at the lower end gain some modicum of power, the truly powerful start clawing it back. The cycle seems endless because it is. I think the big culprit, preventing working people from holding onto power is apathy.
As a Baby Boomer I grew up in a time of unprecedented prosperity and freedom, though not for everyone. I took the good times for granted, as destined, the natural order of things, the uninterrupted continuation of man’s upward climb.
Obviously, I was wrong – but I’m hopeful. My kids and their friends are more attuned (they feel the pain) to the society’s failures and are willing to fight for better times. That overworked pendulum will swing creakingly the other way, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, and hopefully without too much pain.
Lois Gagnon, Thank You, for “Standing Up!”
“All hail da Boomers!” Generally, every generation blames the one before. Obviously, Lois, you bring home the fact that “the worm has turned,” i.e., ‘these young people put everything on the line because they understand in their bones the cause is just and essential.’
The greatest of all time (g.o.a.t.), IMO, “Take-Aways,” Generations ABC thru X, Y, Z, are OUTRAGED! And, encouraged, enlightened, energized NOT blaming; but, learning from “The Boomers,” Lois’ & Company’s, “activism,” f/COUNTS! Regardless, of “number” standing against, the “Hit & Run,” by the USG’s Generation of Genociders. The “Youth” of this Nation will NOT be silenced!!!
…. “All hail the underdogs. All hail the new kids. All hail the [Activists], Lois, Steve, Cypher Random. All hail CN’s Readership’s “Commentary.” I’ve read every word. I have; and, “You, Rock!!!”
TY! “Keep It Lit.”
When I consider how so many things go viral on social media and yet actual depth and thought never do (or so it seems to me), I am left to conclude that the masses have completely outsourced their thinking to their “team.” It is not only pathetic but quite boring. Reflecting on this, I was taken back to an anti-war protestor of another generation, Thomas Merton. In “New Seeds of Contemplation” he wrote, “Sinners are people who hate everything, because their world is necessarily full of betrayal, full of illusion, full of deception. And the greatest sinners are the most boring people in the world because they are also the most bored and the ones who find life most tedious.”
Are there any more boring and tedious people in our politics than Hillary Clinton, Mike Johnson, Antony Blinken? (It would be a hell of a long list if I tried to jot down those that pop into my mind.) Boring, tedious, and diabolical. Makers of hell incarnate.
Blinken’s certainly boring – he would have been “good” (for a change) in that classic Monty Python sketch. But I’m beginning to think he’s almost as monstrous as HRC.
Great piece Mr. Lawerence. It is great, because it is so very true; many ordinary Americans feel powerless in the face of it all, and the powerlessness manifests, not only in the form of depression, which is ubiquitous, but anger, violence, anxiety, delirium, denial, all kinds of unstable emotive insanity.
It is most difficult to be positive in the face of the madness, but many are trying, much to their credit. As Patrick notes at the end here, as long as we live and breathe, or are willing and able, there is a shred of hope that enough of us will eventually coalesce into a massive counter-force to the pathological elitist agenda of “business as usual even if it brings about the end of us all.” Hard to imagine, maybe, in light of how successfully they pit us all against eachother. But impossible? No.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – […] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
Carl Sagan
This great man died 28 years ago. His premonition is our unfortunate reality.
This quote is fundamentally right, well done, very appropriate. The challenge for “the powers” is total control and return to a feudal system, poor in tents on the street so be it. Can it be done, they wonder, this return to the dark ages, and strive for it. But their nervousness is shown by draconian bullying to shut down protest and free speech, to squash it. Back in the hell no days could we have imagined universities and their presidents in such cowardice as we have recently seen? Recall Kent State and what a wake-up call that was. Our only power is to keep speaking clearly, keep on truth to power and hell no!
We are all truly “Les Misérables”. Only now, the PTB have sophisticated means (not only by laws and brutality) to keep us under control should we rise up. You are right, they are nervous.
Is anyone today writing more trenchant stuff than Patrick Lawrence? The only other contender I can think of is Chris Hedges. I try to read every word both gentlemen write.
P.S. Mr. Lawrence’s takedown of Zeynep Tufekci is long overdue.
Vijay Prashad possesses clarity as well
The ONE and ONLY logical conclusion one can draw from all this, is the Only One that we knew all along. Namely, the USA of A is zionist occupied territory, just like Palestine. Palestine will be free when the USA throws its zionist shackles off its back! Come on USA patriots say “Liberty or Death” once again!!!
Really beautiful, necessary and hopeful perspective – thank you Patrick. Buying into the illusion of powerlessness is perhaps the most dangerous trap for us of all.
“Consumer capitalism is vastly more advanced than it was during the ‘Hell, no’ days.” Yes, vastly more advanced in massaging consciousness away from thinking about, concern for, or interest in “power.” I do not use quotation marks here disparagingly. I am definitely in want of personal power at this moment and have, as with many, felt the utter powerlessness of responding to the worst atrocities and savagery inflicted on innocents since Nazi Germany. In short, the System has indeed advanced to what back in the old days would have seemed impossible. Just as we read works like We, Clockwork Orange, Brave New World and disbelieved them. That point where, as one of our genius politicians remarked, the time would come when everything served to the public is false. There is much here to explore, with today’s saturation in advertising and consciousness massaging foremost . . . The goal is apparently to infantilize and lead by the nose.